Dzhokhar Tsarnaev charged with using ‘weapon of mass destruction’

Federal prosecutors charged the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings with terrorism on Monday, outlining a chilling plot in which the man and his brother allegedly used low-grade but deadly explosives timed to detonate a block apart.

As he lay seriously injured in a Boston area hospital, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was charged with using a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property, counts that could bring him the death penalty. He made his first court appearance in an unusual, non-public proceeding in which a federal judge and several lawyers went to his hospital bed.

The toll from the bombings, according to court documents and interviews on Monday, could have been far higher. Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, 26, who was killed Friday after a firefight with police, had a homemade arsenal of explosives. Some law enforcement officials said they think the brothers were planning more attacks.

The pair also apparently had no escape plan. The FBI found in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s college dorm room what appeared to be the same black jacket and white hat he wore on the day of the attack, court documents said.

As the legal machinery began moving, the rituals of recovery continued in Boston. Near the marathon finish line, where three people were killed and more than 200 injured, residents and office workers poured out of buildings on Monday for a moment of silence at the same time the bombings occurred one week ago.

When the clock reached 2:50 p.m., hundreds of people — standing on sidewalks, street corners and building steps — froze in place. Even some cars stopped moving, ignoring green lights until cabs honked for them to move. Some people wiped away tears; others hugged.

Within five minutes, the buzz of life again hit the streets. Yet earlier in the day, the atmosphere was equally solemn in a quiet Boston suburb as people came together to mourn Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager, in the first funeral for a bombing victim. Firefighters, members of the Guardian Angels and motorcyclists joined Campbell’s high school classmates and others, the mourners dressed mostly in black and standing quietly in a cold wind.

The criminal complaint against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, ended a debate over how one of the first successful terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland since Sept. 11, 2001, should be handled. Some congressional Republicans had insisted that Tsarnaev be designated an “enemy combatant,’’ which would enable the government to charge him under the laws of war in a military commission or to hold him indefinitely.

Oznake: news, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Weapon of mass